Course Requirements:
The assignments for this class are designed to mimic the kind of work you will be doing as a professional in the field of children's literature.
You will participate in a scholarly community, write reviews of both scholarly and children's books, do peer reviews of other scholars' work,
and write for publication. You will also prepare presentations for teaching or for conferences.
F2F and online class participation 10%
Teaching or Conference Presentation 20%
Book Review with Class Presentation 20%
Review of new children's book 10%
Final project (submitted in stages) 40%
To pass the course, you must complete each requirement, and comply with
the attendance requirements outlined in the general
course policies.
All assignments are graded holistically according to the terms of
my grading rubric.
Discussion
questions & class participation:
I am going to attempt to keep a
class blog. On it, I
will post questions, thoughts, etc. before and after class. You need to
log in to post a comment.
You should check it and engage with topics that interest/intrigue/confuse you. This
10% of your grade will be
determined by your level of perceived
engagement in the ideas of the
course.
Teaching
Presentation:
This presentation is an
opportunity for you to try relating some of the theoretical concepts we
discuss to a particular children's text. You are to
prepare a
twenty-minute presentation that clearly articulates your concept as it
relates to the text you have chosen, and then the class will have time to
respond/challenge/extend your idea. You might think of this as a teaching
session--you are teaching a particular idea or concept to undergraduates
(or whatever grade you teach), making it accessible through a textual
example. Alternately, you might use this as an
opportunity to practice a
conference paper. Grade will be based mostly on the clarity with which you present
your ideas.
Reviews
(2):
You
will write two book reviews
in this class. The first is of a scholarly
book chosen from a list organized by category.
Academic book reviews
include a summary of the argument and chapters, and
an assessment of the book's strengths, weaknesses, and value to the
profession. Emphasis
in this class should be on the author's engagement
and proficiency with theory. They are typically less than 2000 words, but
we're flexible.
Look at the Quarterly or The Lion & the
Unicorn for models. The book you choose
will be linked to the topic under discussion in class that night,
so
your due date will be that evening. You will also present your book to
the class, emphasizing what it adds to the topic under discussion,
in a
presentation of no more than 20 minutes.
You will also write a book
review for a children's book. These are much shorter--around 1
double-spaced page or 300 words. The summary of
the book should stop
"above the fold" if the paper were folded in half, and the remainder is
used for critique. Your audience is people who limited
budgets who want
to decide whether or not they need the book for their libraries or their
research.
Final Project:
Your final project should be personally meaningful and theoretically
informed. The project will be completed in stages:
Stage 1: The Idea. You may either come in and discuss your idea with me, or
write it up in a one paragraph abstract and turn it in.
I'll expect one on
the other before February 7th.
Stage 2: The Research. Please submit an annotated bibliography for your
seminar paper. Annotations can be brief, one-two sentences,
but the
bibliography itself should be thorough and substantial. From your
bibliography, select one article from a journal that is likely to be
interested in your topic. Perform a rhetorical analysis of the article,
paying attention to the style of introduction and strategy of organization,
the way it incorporates outside sources, the use of textual material in
making its argument, and the breadth of its bibliography.
This is due March
14th.
Stage 3: Write and turn in a draft of your article on April 4th. Turn your
draft in without any identifying headers except the number assigned
to you.
These drafts will be redistributed among your peers in a double-blind review
process.
Stage 4: Complete a peer review for the draft that you have received. This
is due April 11th.
Stage 5: Final papers are due April 25th.
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